


Once Upon a Time in the Narrows

by Jester85



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky is Nightwing, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M, One Shot, Post-The Dark Knight Rises, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 19:57:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7697521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jester85/pseuds/Jester85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where instead of 1940s Brooklyn, Steve Rogers lives in the poor neighborhood The Narrows in present day Gotham City, post the events of The Dark Knight Rises.  And instead of Robin John Blake, Batman left his mantle to Steve's boyfriend, cop-turned-superhero James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time in the Narrows

**Author's Note:**

> This is....random. I don't know. It's crap, maybe.

The rain pounded down on the Narrows, soaking the laundry strung out between the crumbling tenement buildings, casting into shadowy silhouette the harried figures on foot or cycles bustling through the narrow winding streets, and even seeping through a stained moldy cracking ceiling to drip onto a head of tousled blond hair matted with blood.

Steve's head was swimming, his eyes weighed down like bricks in his head.  He had to stay awake, but it was too hard.....memories and dreams ran together with the present, his mind fractured along the fault lines the crowbar had splintered in his skull, and he wasn't sure where he was.  He tried to focus on the cartoon Buck had drawn on the wall, borrowing his colored pencil set---though he couldn't complain, considering Buck had bought it for him for his birthday last month.  Bucky couldn't draw for shit, it was a silly stick figure with a crude mop of yellow hair, but Steve hadn't had the heart to erase it.

It was hard to focus on, though.  His mind grasped at it like fingers clutching at a sheet of slick ice, but it upturned and fell away from him in the darkness.

_"My little artist," Ma murmured against his unruly hair where her lips had brushed a moment before---_

_\---"Buck, not on the wall!" he chided, desperately trying to clamp down the grin tugging at his lips, before the brunette's answering cheeky grin defeated him utterly---_

Grin.

A grin nothing like Buck, a distorted parody, literally carved into the man's face like a Jack O'Lantern, a half-crescent slash of garish red against chalky white.

From somewhere above but not nearly far enough away, "How much longer's Lover Boy gonna be, _hmm_?"

A different voice, echoing back from the noise and stench of an alleyway years ago---" _Ya just dun know when to give up, do ya?"_

"I can do this all day."

" _Ooooh, a man after my own heart!_ " The Joker's whiny, nasally voice sing-songed above him.  Another second, and it plunged several octaves into a snarling, almost animalistic growl.  " _I was getting afraid we were gonna lose you before the main event._ "

A purple gloved hand seized his chin and forced him to meet eyes as black and dead as a shark's, black marbles not touched by the eternal perverse mockery of a grin carved into the man's ghoulish features, framed by long hanging strands of green-brown hair.

"So you think Nightwing's made Gotham a _better_ place?" Joker asked, his voice going high again, his tone condescending like a teacher addressing a dim pupil, but with an undertone of sheer glee bubbling underneath.  He was performing again, launching back into his restless monologue.  Over his shoulder, Steve dully registered the fuzzy figures of his clown-masked goons, automatic weapons at the ready.

" _ **Look at me!**_ " Joker abruptly roared, so ferociously that Steve jerked awake a fraction more, his bleary eyes refocusing on the freak's distorted features, and then Joker was gentling him, petting him like a cat, shushing and pinching his cheeks, and Steve thought he preferred it when he was screaming in rage.

"H-he's a symbol," Steve murmured, his tongue feeling fat and sluggish in his mouth, "That we don't have to be afraid....of scum....like you."

"Yeahhh...." Joker murmured in faux sympathy, then the hand was grabbing Steve's skull and squeezing, sending lightning flashes of pain stabbing through his cracked temple, "You  _do,_ Steven!  You  _really, really do!  Super duper do!"_

"I'm not afraid of you," Steve gasped against the glove crushing his face, "Kill me....but...I won't---"  
  
A mirthless giggle cut him off, Joker peering down into his face in a mix of amusement and bewilderment.  "I'm not gonna  _kill_ you!" he chortled incredulously.  "Where would the fun in _that_ be?"

The glove released him suddenly, and Steve's face fell forward, though not fast enough to miss the crowbar plucked from the wall it was leaning against.  His insides roiled.  He couldn't take much more of this.  But it didn't matter.  He wouldn't give him Bucky.

"I would say this is gonna hurt me as much as it is you," Joker warbled, standing over him, lightly swinging the crowbar like a golf club, "But who am I kidding, this is gonna hurt you  _waaaay more!_ "

That damn cackle.  It hurt Steve's head worse than the crowbar.  There was no joy in it.  

_Bucky....I'm sorry....I love you._

And then there was nothing but the sound of breaking glass.

" _The man of the hour!_ " Joker crowed.

Shadows danced across the floor, intertwining shapes, flailing limbs and tangling bodies, the flash of gunfire.  Steve tried to raise his head, to look, but everything was so heavy, it was like a million hands were tugging at his clothes, his face, his hair, and he just wanted to sleep, he wanted it so bad.

Vaguely, the cold chill of a gun to his temple registered, The Joker sing-songing " _All the kings horses and all the king's men...._ ", and then the flash went off, and for a second Steve could see and hear nothing, and he thought he was dead, but then the gun clattered to the floor, the heat of the thwarted bullet fading from his ear it had grazed, and then a body was thudding into walls, the whir of a metal arm mixing with The Joker's hysterical laughter, and then the laugh cut off with a sickening crunch as Nightwing broke The Joker's neck.

*** * ***

Bucky didn't allow himself a second to think about what he'd just done, about the body sprawled out on the floor in green and purple, feet in mismatched gaudy socks kicking their last spasm.  He'd imagine Alfred's grave look of consternation later.  He'd think about what Mr. Wayne would think about Nightwing killing in his name later.

Right now there was Steve.   _Stevestevestevesteve...._

"Steve!" he cried as he threw himself onto his knees in front of the chair where his boyfriend was tied up, looking so, so small, and for a moment as his mind registered the fallen crowbar, and the blood soaking his Stevie's golden hair, for just one hot ugly moment, Bucky wanted to turn back time and bring The Joker back to life so he could feel his neck break under his fingers one more time.

" _Buck_...."  Steve's voice, always so surprisingly deep and masculine for coming out of a fella who looked like a stiff breeze would send him blowing away through the air like a plastic bag, was faint, barely audible, and Bucky felt an icy trickle of fear settle itself deep in the pit of his gut.

"Hang on, Stevie, I'mma get ya outta here, k?"

" _Buck_...."

"Dun talk, Stevie..."

" _Tha_... _end o'thuh line....heh_ "  And Steve, damn him, actually fucking smiled.  And then his eyes rolled back and everything was white, and he dreamed Bucky was screaming.

 

*** * ***

 

Everything was white.

 

The bright fluorescent hospital lights stabbed his eyes like knives.  The walls were painfully white.  He was wearing a white hospital gown.

Bucky.

His boyfriend, dark-haired, wearing his black leather jacket and those tight skinny jeans that hugged his ass only slightly less sinfully than his Nightwing costume, was staring at him from the chair a hand's breath away.  His eyes looked bloodshot, and his hair was standing up everywhere, like he'd been running his hands through it.

"Bucky," Steve groaned, and his boyfriend was on him in a flash, fingers brushing his skin so gently, like he was the most fragile and precious thing in the world.

"Jesus, Stevie, dun scare me like that..."

"Like ta keep ya on your toes," Steve groaned, and smiled a little at Bucky's chuckle.

"As much as I'm all for spicin' up our love life, I think near-death is stretching it, Stevie,"

" _Near_ -death," Steve emphasized, and grinned at Bucky's eye roll.  "I'm still here."

"Yea," Bucky breathed, wrapping his fingers around Steve's and squeezing gently.  "You're still here."

"To the end of the line, 'member?"  
  


A smile finally warmed Bucky's tense face, a real one, and Steve felt his chest clearing.  He was gonna be okay.  They were gonna be okay.

"Yea.  Til' the end of the line, pal."

 


End file.
